James Preston Tips for doing Bad Things to Your Characters. As I write this I am watching an old episode of CSI. Ray Langston, (Laurence Fishburn) is testifying in the trial of a psychotic who stabbed him. It is an excruciating series of scenes, definitely not for the faint of heart. As a child when […]

Tiffany Lawson Inman Hello writers!  If you have read my guest posts on WITS before, you know I love talking about Crossing Emotional Barriers and Crossing Physical Barriers in Fiction.  Today I will be diving into another very important element of story craft that you should be paying close attention to. Dramatic momentum. Dramatic momentum […]

Susan Meissner Every now and then I get a little jealous of the freedom that fantasy fiction novelists have to create a world and its history with such creative and even reckless abandon. Since I write historical fiction (emphasis on historical), I don’t experience the same level of artistic liberty. And while I love the […]

Angela Ackerman  We all know people read fiction for entertainment. There’s nothing like getting lost in a new world and living vicariously through characters: slaying monsters, solving murders, saving the family farm...even falling in (or out of) love.  But while this is going on, whether we consciously realize it or not, we also read for […]

I’m always amused when friends or family read my work and try to piece together who a certain character is modeled after. My standard answer is, “no one and everyone.” Whether it’s characters or locations, situations or details, there’s always a hint of my life in every book I write. Characters. I'm going to put […]